Dawns a New Day
January 29th 2007 08:17
First day at the three-week full-time job. Boss is almost invisible: no hands-on lady, she. Not unfriendly, just not involved with the staff. I'm with a guy who's supposed to have been going on holiday next week (hence my presence in the place), except his wife had a heart attack on the weekend and is in hospital.
On either side of us are a couple of women, one with a fairly tart tongue, the other one with a tongue and attitude coarser still. The guys approach her with some caution. The language, as they used to say, would make a sailor blush.
I was introduced to practically everyone and everywhere, and promptly forgot most of the names and faces. But at least I now know I'm not working where I thought I was - although I did spend an hour in that building this afternoon, getting a run-down on the computer program they use (which isn't to difficult). The lady accountant gave me the 'lesson' and the staff in that part of the building seem rather more pleasant. In our section tradesmen come and go, and there's a generally more down-to-earth air to the place.
Ramshackle building: it's been overhauled and redone and revamped and swapped about and had its innards removed and replaced so many times, an architect would have a fit. People inhabit offices, mostly with glass walls, that run into each other, or out the door. We're in the usual open-plan style, just able to see the scalp of the person next to us.
The job isn't too drastic, and I suspect would take half the time it gets in any other hands. But the staff in this section are old city council people, or have learned their ways, and things mosey along. At least they do with the feller I'm taking over from - temporarily. Think it might be symptomatic of this particular section. The accountants' area, I suspect, is rather more efficiently run.
Photo courtesy of a Dutch blogger's site. It's a beach in Fiji.
On either side of us are a couple of women, one with a fairly tart tongue, the other one with a tongue and attitude coarser still. The guys approach her with some caution. The language, as they used to say, would make a sailor blush.
I was introduced to practically everyone and everywhere, and promptly forgot most of the names and faces. But at least I now know I'm not working where I thought I was - although I did spend an hour in that building this afternoon, getting a run-down on the computer program they use (which isn't to difficult). The lady accountant gave me the 'lesson' and the staff in that part of the building seem rather more pleasant. In our section tradesmen come and go, and there's a generally more down-to-earth air to the place.
Ramshackle building: it's been overhauled and redone and revamped and swapped about and had its innards removed and replaced so many times, an architect would have a fit. People inhabit offices, mostly with glass walls, that run into each other, or out the door. We're in the usual open-plan style, just able to see the scalp of the person next to us.
The job isn't too drastic, and I suspect would take half the time it gets in any other hands. But the staff in this section are old city council people, or have learned their ways, and things mosey along. At least they do with the feller I'm taking over from - temporarily. Think it might be symptomatic of this particular section. The accountants' area, I suspect, is rather more efficiently run.
Photo courtesy of a Dutch blogger's site. It's a beach in Fiji.
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